Writing: musicology

The summer after my sophomore year of high school, I was accepted to the Baltimore School for the Arts (BSA) in Baltimore, Maryland. So I packed my bags, kissed my parents goodbye, and moved to Lutherville, Maryland, where I lived with my aunt and uncle to attend BSA in the city. By June of my junior year, however, I had decided to move back to my hometown of Trenton, Michigan, to finish my high school education at Trenton High School. When I think about my reasons for moving back home, Johannes Brahms' Intermezzo in A Major Op. 118 No. 2 sticks out in my mind as a deciding factor. This piece not only shaped my high school and college education, but it also shaped me as musician and defined the ways that music is a part of my life.

BSA is one of the top five public music high schools in the country. The students there all took their art form very seriously, often practicing four or five hours a day. Upon arriving at BSA and discovering this, I was immediately up for the challenge. I worked hard to keep up with my classmates, practicing diligently all of the pieces that my piano teacher assigned me, in addition to working daily on scales, finger exercises, sight reading, music theory, and sight-singing. I plowed through an entire Mozart sonata in the first month, putting aside small differences in opinion that my teacher and I had on two of the three movements. I wanted to make a good first impression on my new teacher, my new school, and my new classmates. I completed every task exactly as it was asked of me without asking any questions. Then I started playing the Brahms.

Of all of the piano pieces that I have played in my sixteen years of playing, eight measures of this particular intermezzo are my favorite to play. When I play measures 50 through 57, I am able to express the passion that I feel for music; my skin gets tingly and my fingers seem to move on their own accord, gliding across the keys in intervals and crossovers that normally might be awkward for my tiny hands. Oddly, I'm able to sit down at the piano with those eight measures in almost any kind of mood. For me, it has the ability to function as expressions of melancholy, happiness, frustration, or even anger—not an easy task for a piece of music. But when I studied this piece with a particular teacher at BSA, I found that my passions were temporarily inaccessible; not only did I cease to enjoy playing this piece, but my love for music was slowly drained from me. My teacher and I had held different opinions on the way that the piece should be played; he contended that Brahms intended it to be played one way, while I felt that I could both express myself and perform the piece with emotion best a different way.

Tempo is one aspect of the intermezzo in which my teacher and I held differing opinions. I prefer to play the piece slowly, freely, and with a few rubatos on the longer chords (measures 49 or 75, for example). I felt that "andante teneramente," while literally meaning "moderately slow and even, tenderly" could be applied at the performer's discretion. I feel that there is no harm in enjoying a beautiful chord for a few extra seconds, or pushing the tempo a bit in a climatic phrase (as in measures 30-31). I believe that musical breathes are very important, but my teacher insisted that I learn the piece with a metronome (while other teachers have forbid me to use the metronome with

composers such as Brahms or Chopin). During my lesson, I often felt out of breathe by the time the piece was completed, completely dissatisfied with the way it had sounded.

Dynamics, one of the most expressive and sometimes interpretive elements of music, was actually an element of the intermezzo that my teacher and I mostly agreed on. The dynamics really helped me to express myself when playing this piece, and it is this aspect of music which I feel best articulates passion. The echo effect was used liberally, as there were many repetitions of melodies (measures 9 and 50). I loved swelling the phrases with "hairpin" crescendos and diminuendos (measures 3-5, 11-13, etc.), building up to a climax (measures 26-31) and then gradually coming down (measures 31-35) both in dynamics and pitch.

This piece also really helped me to appreciate pitch on a different level. My teacher really helped me to appreciate subtle differences in large chords, like the difference between a half step in just one note of a chord when played a second time (the c/c# in measures 17-18 or the c/c# in measures 33- 35). In addition, I have never before enjoyed the left hand part of a piece as I have in the Brahms; in measures 43-49 I loved articulating the stepward descending motion of the rich, beautiful bass line as it dove deeper and deeper into the depths of the piano.

Rhythm is another important aspect of this piece, and one that I struggled with a bit. However, since working with this piece I have never had any problems with two against three rhythms (as found in measure 50) or temporarily adjusting to duple meter (as in measure 30).

Studying the Brahms intermezzo with limitations on my personal expression dampered my enjoyment of music to a point where I didn't even want to play music anymore. When articulating my contradictory musical opinions to my piano teacher, he asserted that if I was a serious piano student, then I would have to start listening to the opinions of my teachers. In a conservatory setting, he said, my professors would insist that I play musical selections as the composer intended, and that the professor's interpretation of that intension was the final say in a student's performance (this now reminds of the introduction to Richard Crawford's book, as he defines the classical sphere as music with the authority of the composer, intended to outlive its time and place of creation. Perhaps I was wrong in selfishly insisting on my personal expressions of emotion; is that how Brahms would have wanted it to be played?). To what extent this statement about conservatory playing was true, I wasn't sure, but after my experience with the Brahms I knew that I did not want to study the piano at a professional level. I realized that I wanted to play the piano for me, to express myself and to enjoy music without the constrictions of differing interpretations. I stopped researching conservatories and decided that I would attend a college or university to pursue other academic interests.

Since a conservatory was no longer in my future, I returned home for my senior year in high school, continued studying the piano with my former teacher (who allowed me to express myself within reason) and applied to the University of Michigan with an interest in English. At U of M—which has a musicology department superior to many conservatories—I took a musicology class out of curiosity, fell in love with it, and am

now majoring in it. Had I not studied the Brahms intermezzo in Baltimore and had a temporary falling out with my passion for music, I might have gone to a conservatory that focuses on music performance and failed to discover my field of interest.
Regardless of the negative connotations that the Brahms may appear to have, every time I hear it I fall in love with it all over again. I can once again sit down at my piano in any mood, and my fingers know exactly what to do—they go straight for the Brahms. Sometimes they skip to that eight measure block, and in less than a minute I can feel my heart rate slow down as feelings of calmness and peace overcome me. While sometimes I think of Baltimore and the experiences I had with my teacher there, the Brahms intermezzo mostly represents my passion for music and how I came to understand what music really, really means to me (expression) and the specific roles that I want music to have (or not have) in my life.

Analysis: "I Get a Kick Out of You"

[University of Michigan, 2008]

Billie Holiday's performance of "I Get a Kick Out of You" is an excellent example of music that has a strong relationship to the text. Not only does Billie's voice employ word painting throughout the song by working with timbre and pitch, but the instrumentation responds to the text with the use of call and response. In addition, the harmonies often reflect the lyrics of the song.

Word painting is an important way that Billie strengthens the meaning of the text. The word "kick" is sung eight times throughout the song, and each time Billie sings it in a curt staccato. She places little emphasis on the second "ck," as if she wants to get the word out as fast as possible. It sounds like a quick kick itself, and after each time she says it there is a pause in the phrasing as she takes a breath; she never connects "kick" to the word that follows it, as if she needs to get her feet back on the ground to continue singing.

Another example of word painting is the word "don't" in section B (the second time it's sung). "You obviously don't adore me," Billie sings, and the word "don't" is accentuated as the pitch of her voice rises. The timbre of her voice is more like speech than song, and she exclaims the word a short staccato. By singing it in this way, Billie sounds surprised that someone does not like her, adding meaning to the word choice of "yet" in "yet I get a kick out of you." The person she is singing about obviously doesn't adore her, and ideas or events that are might be considered exciting to some (drugs, alcohol, planes) don't entertain Billie at all. Yet she is still amused by this person. The amusement can be heard in the timbre of her voice; it's more playful and rough—even laughing at times—instead of beautiful and melodious as a song like a love ballad might sound. The instrumentation, as well, sounds lighthearted and jocular, and in the first and second saxophone solo the melody bounces along in good humor.

A third example of word painting is in the third A section. "Flying too high with some guy in the sky," Billy sings, and the notes rise higher and higher in pitch, corresponding with the height described in the lyrics. Finally, with "my idea of nothing to do," the melody drops in pitch, reflecting her boredom with planes, and a slight upward inflection in pitch is heard in the word "nothing," as if Billie is trying to spice up the boring nature of planes.

Instrumentation interacts directly with the text in "I Get a Kick Out of You" by making use of the call-and-response technique. After every two measures of singing, a muted trumpet plays a snippet of music, answering the vocals and creating a musical conversation between Billie's voice and the trumpet. Music responds to the text even more in the third A section; in response to Billie's "I get no kick in a plane," the muted trumpet soars up and down as if the melody itself were on a plane.

Even the harmony interacts with the text in this song. Whenever the harmony moves from a V (dominant) chord to a I (tonic) chord—an authentic cadence—the text seems to be asking a question or needing a response. "So tell me why should it be true" is on the dominant chord, and just as the dominant always wants to resolve (usually to the tonic) so too does this line pose a question. The answer in the text never comes (as expected) but the next line's harmony resolves on the tonic chord, and so the listener is

satisfied. This harmonic progression happens again with "That would bore me terrifically too," and "my idea of nothing to do." Both are statements that want something more interesting (bored/nothing to do) to be said. "Yet I get a kick out of you" remedies Billie's boredom both in the text's subject (whoever the song is about) and in the music (by resolving on the tonic chord).

The interaction between music and text can play a very important role in conveying a song's meaning, as in "I Get a Kick Out of You." Not only does Billie Holiday alter the timbre, pitch, and dynamics of her voice to better express the meaning of the words she is singing, but the instrumentation responds to the words as well with its call and response, timbre, melodies and harmonies.

“Dear Goldberg, Do Play Me One of My Variations!”

[UNSW, 2009]

Former Russian ambassador Count Hermann Karl von Kaiserling could not sleep at night. He suffered from insomnia, and when Johann Gottlieb Goldberg and Johann Sebastian Bach teamed together, a solution was formulated. That solution was the “Goldberg” Variations for the harpsichord, or Variations for Harpsichord in G Major, BWV 988: An Aria with Diverse Variations. It is the last of the sequence of keyboard music that J.S. Bach composed titled Clavierübung. Kaiserling, the patron of fourteen year old Johann Goldberg, often stopped in Leipzig with Goldberg to have Bach instruct the young harpsichordist. The Count was often sick and had much trouble sleeping, and Goldberg played for him frequently to ease his insomnia. The Count mentioned to Bach that he desired some pieces for Goldberg to play that would be cherry, smooth, and lively to cheer him up during his long, sleepless nights. And so the Goldberg Variations were composed, named for the young virtuoso, and the Count never grew sick of them. He liked them so much, in fact, that he rewarded Bach extremely generously with a goblet full of gold, probably the highest payment that Bach ever received for a single composition (Goldberg).

However, this anecdote may be myth. The story came from Johann Nikolaus Forkel’s biography of J.S. Bach, written more than sixty years after the Goldberg Variations wee composed. There is no official dedication to the Count documented on the title page of the composition (as was customary), or anywhere else, and no record exists of the golden goblet in which Bach’s payment was supposedly given in. Furthermore, since it is likely that the variations were composed around 1739 -1740, Goldberg, born in 1727, would have been only twelve years old. While it is possible that the young musician was extraordinarily talented and had the abilities and technical skills to play the Goldberg Variations (he did, in fact, have the reputation as being an extremely talented musician), another hypothesis is that J.S. Bach’s son, Wilhelm Friedemann, was the intended performer of this composition. J.S. Bach had already written several pieces for him previous to the creation of the variations (Williams).

However, J.S. Bach’s obituary, published in 1754, does document the composition’s official purpose: the Goldberg Variations is a work “prepared for the soul’s delight of music-lovers”. This phrase also has religious connotations, as J.S. Bach was an orthodox Lutheran. The piece, therefore, may also have been a pious offering. It was composed around 1739, engraved in 1741, and on sale at the Leipzig Michaelmas Fair later that year (Williams). This was quite unusual, for many of Bach’s works were not published while he was alive. During the time of composition of the Goldberg Variations, J.S. Bach was directing the Collegium Masicum in Leipzig, an association of professional musicians and students that held public concerts each week. He was the director of this association until the early 1740s. During this time he also went on many concert tours and turned his attention to various private interests, like the Count who commissioned him for the Goldberg Variations (Geiringer).

The form of the Goldberg Variations is very organized. It is a theme and variation written for the harpsichord (although today it is most often played on the piano), and each variation has its own thematic material. The time signature is ¾. Every third variation is a canon, and there is an ascending pattern: the first canon is on the tonic, the second canon is at the second (a second above the first), and this pattern is followed until the twenty seventh variation, which is on the ninth. The last variation is a quodlibet, and two independent melodies are played together. The theme is thirty two measures long, divided into two sixteen measure sections (Goldberg). The aria, or theme, is not present or even hinted at again throughout the variations until the end, but the harmonies fundamental to the aria are the basis for all of the variations. Two manuals are not required to play all of the notes, but on the title page of the composition they are denoted mandatory for eleven of the variations and optional for three (Williams).

This paper, however, will focus specifically on the first variation. Energetic and lively, it is extremely different in mood than the slow and meditative theme, but the steps of the bass are pointedly the same as in the theme. It is a duet between the right and left hands. Measure nine of the first variation presents a new idea and is an inverted variation of the left hand melody in measure thirteen. There are wide arpeggios and big leaps throughout the variation (Goldberg). The two voices are often involved in hand crossings throughout their duet, and there are two exact halves (like each of the variations), each sixteen measure half played twice. The phrases are in a two bar structure, and the bass theme is thirty two measures and thirty two notes long. Two keys exist, one major and one minor, and it is hypothesized to be a polonaise because it is a dance in constant triple time. There is an alteration of four bar phrasing in the first half of the variation. Measures one through four invert in measures five through eight, and measures nine through twelve invert in measures thirteen through sixteen. There is a hand-crossing in measures twenty one and twenty-two, and one bar phrases in measures nine through eleven. Syncopation exists in the first seven bars (Williams).

It is often said that the Goldberg Variations are the most important set of variations of the Baroque Era, and are considered the model for what all variations should be like. According to Bukofzer, most early Baroque music had a multi-sectional structure. The variations are characteristic of the Baroque Era in this way, because each variation is divided exactly in half into two sections. The set of variations is also Baroque because it has structure (every third variation is a canon) and balance.

In terms of the reception of the Goldberg Variations and the performance history, it is estimated that Wilhelm Friedemann, son of J.S., and possibly Philipp Emanual, played the Goldberg Variations in public performances while traveling as musicians. No documentation exists to prove this hypothesis, however (Williams).

Sir John Hawkin’s General History of Music, published in 1776, includes three movements of the Goldberg Variations. Other than this publication, however, the composition was mostly forgotten for years, even decades, subsequent to its publication (Williams).

Dresdener A. A. Klengei, born in 1783, emulated the canonic techniques of the Goldberg Variations in his work, especially in his Exercises pour le pianoforte, published in 1841. Johann Nicolaus Forkel, who wrote the first biography of J.S. Bach, wrote variations mimicking the Goldberg Variations’ technique. He also extolled the composition and claimed it to be the quintessential variation. Franz Liszt played some of the Goldberg Variations during his recital tour from 1838-1848. The Complete Bach Edition by Franz Anton Hoffmeister was available for purchase in 1803, and included the Goldberg Variations. The variations were also re-issued by Peters in Leipzig, and this kept the work in print. Carl Czerny’s fingered edition of 1840 was used by many piano students for several generations, and the Bach Society Edition of 1853 encouraged newer performing editions like Josef Rheinberger’s version for two pianos in 1883. (Williams)

During the twentieth century, piano performances of the Goldberg Variations have been accompanied with descriptive analysis’, such as Sir Donald Francis Tovey’s analysis in 1900. The Ferruccio Busoni edition of the variations was reordered for a better sense of a climax in 1915 (Williams).

In 1866, organological expert A.J. Hipkins played some of the variations on the harpsichord to the Royal Musical Association in London (Williams).

Today, the performance of the Goldberg Variations is considered to be very difficult, because it was written for the harpsichord with two keyboards, including hand crossings. However, methods have been invented to overcome these difficulties, and the variations are performed as time allows, as the composition as a whole usually takes between forty and eighty minutes to perform, depending on tempo and the observance of the repeat signs (Parry). Glenn Gould is well known for his performance of the Goldberg Variations; in fact, his interpretation of the composition is considered to be one of the most famous classical piano recordings ever made. Since he recorded his unique version of the Goldberg Variations in 1955, it has never been out of print.

I chose this particular set of variations to study because I find it to be extremely beautiful. Furthermore, it was very influential in terms of setting the standard for variations and creating an AABB form. As a pianist and a harpist, I also have a deep appreciation for difficult compositions, especially those written for the harpsichord that may have been written for two keyboards and have hand cross overs. I really enjoyed learning about this piece, and playing parts of it as well.

Works Cited

Bukofzer, Manfred F. Music in the Baroque Era. New York: Norton Press, 1947.

Geiringer, Karl. The Bach Family: Seven Generations of Creative Genius. New York:

Oxford University Press, 1954.

Goldberg, Laurette. The Goldberg Variations Reader: A Performers’ Guide and

Anthology of Critical Appreciation. San Francisco: Giant Horse Printing, Inc, 2002.

Kirkpatrick, Ralph, ed. Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Goldberg Variations, Edited for

the Harpsichord or piano. New York: G. Schirmer, Inc, 1938.

Parry, C. Hubert H. Johann Sebastian Bach: The Story of the Development of a Great

Personality. London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909.

Williams, Peter. Bach: The Goldberg Variations. The United Kingdom: Cambridge

University Press, 2001.

High Art and Popular Music

[University of Michigan, 2008]

Classical music and popular music each enjoy two very different audiences. As an advocate of both genres, I find both John Carey and Julian Johnson to be partially correct in their arguments about the differences between the two types of music and how they should be perceived in today’s society. While popular music should not be shunned as music of the lazy and should be valued for many reasons (as Carey argues), I also agree with Johnson in that it is society that causes classical music to be reserved for the few (“elitist”), by not only reinforcing stereotypes of high art advocates, but by the lack of musical instruction in the educational system and the very nature of its demand for intellectual understanding.

John Carey argues that there are no rational grounds in discerning classical music (“high art”) from popular music. He asserts that those who consider classical art to be “high art” think that they lead better, richer, and happier lives, and that everyone else would, too, if they only exposed themselves to higher art forms. These advocates of high art, he goes on, are ignorant of the satisfaction that “lower” art brings.

I partially agree with Carey on these points. Classical music is different from popular music, and should thus be distinguished as a different art form. If classical music was appreciated and understood by the masses, then it would be perceived as a subgenre of popular music and could be recognized as one and the same. But it is only the minority that listens to classical music, and its psychological complexity makes it distinctive from popular music. However, I agree with Carey’s argument that those who advocate purely “high” art forms without experiencing non-Classical music are unjustified in their claims. They cannot put down “lower” art forms or say that theirs is the only kind that would bring happiness without first listening to it and attempting to understand its purpose and appreciating its artistic expression.

Popular art should not be put condemned for many reasons. By its very name, it appeals to the masses. It is easy to follow, has little psychological puzzles, is “effortless enjoyment,” and is often immediately pleasurable. Some may argue that listeners or viewers of such forms of art are lazy, careless, and addicted to instant pleasure. In order to fully appreciate the genius and complexity of the psychological journey of Beethoven’s fifth symphony, the listener may be required to pay a bit more attention to the use of themes, keys, and the use of form. If a listener isn’t aware of standard sonata form or how to hear keys changes, they may not fully grasp the way Beethoven plays with form, surprises us with modulations, elongates the codas, and adds new instruments and themes when least expected. To them, a symphony will forever be just a series of notes and melodies, repeated and varied at different levels of dynamics. However, I find that given the right melody, instrumentation, and perhaps lyrics, a piece based entirely on the one and five chords can be just as enjoyable as the complicated masterpiece of Beethoven’s fifth.

Take, for example, the Beatles. In 1966, they had sold over 150 million records around the world. Their music appeals to almost all types of people, breaking boundaries of gender, sex, race, and age. While their music was sold to the masses, it especially appealed to the newly created youth culture of the 1960s, creating a huge sense of unity and convergence among young people. As Carey says, popular music emphasizes a sense of belonging, and restores the community of hunter-gatherer that dates back to the Stone Age, when art was the most culturally significant means of expression. The Beatles are the quintessential example of mass art as a means of community and togetherness. A common love for the Beatles brought together millions of people in the 1960s, helped to inspire new schools of thought and ideologies, and in essence created an entire new movement: The Civil Rights Movement. Yet when we examine the music that the Beatles created, we find that most of it is astoundingly simple, based on one, four, and five chords, often repetitive lyrics, and little melodic motion (more noticeable in the early Beatles’ songs). But because of innovative instrumentation, specific messages in the lyrics, and technological advances in the studio, millions of people bought their music and coalesced in harmony. And while the “instant pleasure” aspect of popular, simpler music can easily be associated with the drug craze analogous with Beatlemania, the results of the “instant pleasure” quality of popular music can be viewed as escapism. And according to Carey, escapism is an essential aspect of human life, fundamental to our sense of our own selves.

Johnson, on the other hard, asserts that high art is an essential aspect of humanity. Like Carey, he defines music as a way of escapism, saying that humans aspire to “exceed the limits of oneself and one’s immediate surroundings.” High art achieves this because it surpasses material existence by giving the listener a spiritual energy similar to a religious experience. Because it is manmade, unnatural, and artificial, it can be used to deny the realities of everyday life and take the listener into a world where they pretend to be something they are not. I would argue that while high art can in fact take a listener to a different world, popular art can achieve the same thing for listeners unaccustomed to the sounds of classical music. Someone can just as easily escape from the burdens of everyday life by listening to a Rolling Stones song as someone else can transcend reality by listening to a Haydn string quartet.

I agree with Johnson that elitist thoughts about classical music are reinforced by society. Because opera tickets may cost more, and because the traditional attire for classical concerts and “high art” performances often require suits and formal wear, one must be of a higher social class to experience high art performances live. In addition, the educational system has greatly restricted the appreciation and growth of classical music by refusing to fund classical music instruction via orchestras in schools. Consequently, only those able to afford instruments and private lessons are able to learn classic music. It is, in fact, elitist in the sense that it is available for understanding to only a select few. Thanks to technology, classical music is almost instantaneously available to anyone who wishes to listen to it. By simply turning on the radio, buying a CD, or even downloading a song from a file-sharing network free of charge, any person at any time with internet access can listen to classical music. But only those who have the proper education can fully appreciate it. Most schools, while having marching bands with trumpets, trombones, flutes, and clarinets, fail to provide their students with sting instruments such as the violin, viola, and cello. As a result, young people are learning a limited amount of classical music and given a limited amount of education in music history and music theory, making it extremely difficult for people to truly understand and appreciate why Beethoven’s Fifth or Mozart’s sonatas are so significant.

But classical music need not be elitist and reserved for the select few. Because classical music does not evoke immediate pleasure, people sometimes immediately reject it. Yet all it would take to understand higher art, as Johnson states, is “time, care and a nonappetitive approach.” Therefore, the assertion that those who listen to popular music are lazy can be justified only if they refuse to listen to and appreciate high art music. Listening to and understanding classical music does require a bit of effort, but it is not a task too difficult for the average literate listener.

Minimalism

[University of Michigan, 2007]

Terry Riley’s In C is a composition that was a part of the phenomenon of minimalism. This type of music is based on repetitions of small units that are varied extremely slightly, over large periods of time. Contrary to its title, minimalist works are actually rather long, and the changes that take place in the music unfold slowly. In Riley’s work, there are 53 themes that are to be played by any combination of instruments. Riley leaves an extremely large amount of freedom for the performers of the piece; the themes may be repeated any number of times, on any instrument. The result is a very different kind of music, unlike anything that we’ve studied so far in class. I don’t much care for minimalist music; while I find the concept to be very interesting and I admire the performers for interpreting the score in a unique and appealing fashion, I wouldn’t listen to it on a regular basis for a number of reasons. I enjoy classical music because it always goes somewhere. Whether from tonic to dominant in a Bach, or a surprising I to VI in a Beethoven, much classical music before the 20^th century has a distinct direction. It other words, it harmonically moves. I also don’t really like the texture of Riley’s In C, either. I would much rather hear the sounds of violins, violas, cellos, and standard orchestral instrumentation. I appreciate minimalist music for its innovativeness—though the unrestricted instrumentation and freedom given to performers is reminiscent of the Baroque era—it is contemporary in that it has a very modern sound. I think the fact that it doesn’t have standard orchestral instrumentation contributes to this sound; it sounds as if the entire thing could be produced entirely digitally.

Reich’s It’s Gonna Rain is another example of minimalist music, and represents contemporary Western culture in that it was produced by running two copies of the same tape on machines playing at slightly different speeds. This is called phase music, and again has a very gradual rate of change. This piece somewhat disturbs me, especially toward the end. The words “It’s Gonna Rain” have become more and more apart, and by this time it has been repeated innumerable times. It puts me in a very pessimistic mood, because the same downcast words have been said over and over again. It really forces the listener to think about the meaning of the words, and focus on the intent of the song. I would much rather listen to any symphony in a minor key than hear the words “it’s gonna rain” being repeated for almost eight minutes.

Thea Musgrave’s Orfeo II is an example of postmodernism. I’m not an advocate of this type of music, either. I admire Musgrave for bringing back a classical work such as Orfeo, but the way in which is does it was again somewhat disturbing to me. I would rather watch the opera, where there isn’t so much dissonance and chaos. This piece is contemporary in that the distortion might be representative of the unsettlement and sometimes disturbing society that we live in; with 9/11, terrorist threats, disease, poverty, and murder that goes on, the musical representation of a tragic event such as Orfeo’s adventure may seem fitting. But the original arias of Monteverdi were pleasing to the ear and at the same time conveyed a sense of Orfeo’s lament. The flute sound is very eerie.

In general, I do not care for most of the classical works post 1960, such as Reich, Riley, Leon, and Larsen. I much prefer the antiquated styles of Mozart, Bach and Beethoven. The “pleasing” variety of the Classical Era is exactly what I strive for in my music selections, and most of minimalism, postmodernism, atonalism, and Serialism is not pleasing to my ear.

Appreciating Music

[University of Michigan, 2008]

“For people today, an automobile or an airplane is more valuable than a violin, the circuitry of the computer’s brain more important than a symphony. We pay all too dearly for what we regard as comfortable and essential, while we heedlessly discard the intensity of life in favor of the tinsel of creature comforts—and what we have once truly lost, we will never be able to regain. I could not agree more with Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s evaluation of the state of music in our lives today. We place higher values on material “necessities”: houses, boats, that new pair of shoes. Baseball players are paid millions of dollars a year while the cellist in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra struggles to get by somewhere in the thousands. America would rather watch a football game then attend a concert by the Chicago Symphony, with or without someone as prestigious as Josh Bell. This “intensity of life” that Harnoncourt speaks of, this is what people are missing out on. We are so concerned with who won the Knicks game or when the new model of our favorite car comes out that we forget to appreciate the real drive behind the utmost expression of our present circumstances: music.

I find the paradox in the aesthetic view of contemporary music to be intellectually exciting yet extremely disturbing at the same time. In the past, music has been the instrument of expression for the current circumstances of our world, culture, or society. Music, therefore, could only be fully understood by the people of its era. In other words, music has previously functioned as a fashion statement of the time; whatever situation or mood was occurring, the music was a reflection of that mood or situation and the styles, consonances, dissonances, and sounds were written in accordance to these times. But today, all that is changed. Music’s position as white noise in our society has eliminated the use of extreme dissonance or unsettlement in sound, because who wants to wake up in the morning to a horrific clash of intervals, and who wants to hear the opening chords of Jean-Fery Rebel’s Les elements while drifting off to sleep? But according to the historic definition of music, that it should first and foremost be a reflection of the society from which it comes, dissonance and unsettlement is a necessity in today’s world. We are surrounded by dissonance and unsettlement in real life, with war, poverty, abuse, disease, and crime. If this unsettlement is not reflected in contemporary music, what is to say that in a few hundred years people will look back on the music produced in this time period and think that our era was one of harmony and accord? We no longer treat music as a way to express our situations; rather we use music as a comfort to the situations that we find ourselves to be in. Stressed and overworked, we turn to harmoniousness and tranquility for comfort, not dissension and discord. We rely on the music of our ancestors, the beauty that lies within Mozart and Beethoven, because it is in this music that we find consolation and solace from the pressures of our every day lives. Music has in fact lost the power to shake us, because when we listen to music, we aren’t truly listening. It is simply a combination of noises we use to fill the silence, sound waves of relief to keep ourselves sane.

Harnoncourt offers many solutions to the ever growing problem of music appreciation and comprehension in today’s world. First and foremost, he says, we should turn to the classics: Bach, Mozart, and Monteverdi. Understand the music of these men, he says, and we will then understand what music truly is, that its function goes beyond simply being beautiful, and that it has the capacity to unnerve us. Only then will we be able to turn back to the music of our time, the music analogous with our own society and our own problems, and use today’s music as a means for pushing forward and developing solutions. Harnoncourt also emphasizes the importance of “living within our own culture.” To do so, he offers two approaches: using new methods of teaching music, that is, teaching music as a universal language, a means of expression, rather than simply a series of technical processes, and secondly, rethinking the status of music training.

“We all need music; without it we cannot live.” Harnoncourt’s bold final words go beyond the music of Baroque and Classical music. What he means is that not only do we use music as a white noise in our every day lives to get us through our day, but we also need music as a historical indicator of the attitudes of our present epoch. Without music, our lives would be filled with a disconcerting silence. If music were to be eliminated in our lives, society would be extremely upset. Yet here we are, completely engulfed with music in our lives, and failing to appreciate it, even acknowledge its presence, study it, or broaden our aesthetic views of it.

It seems to me that music in our present world is a form of white noise. Our everyday lives are filled with continuous music, from the moment we wake up to the sound of a radio alarm clock to those last moments of consciousness at the end of the day as we drift off to sleep to the sound of catchy musical tunes advertising the latest product of this material world’s technology. We listen to music in the car, in the workplace, in the elevator, and even on the phone while put on hold. Music is everywhere, but are we really listening?

An Attack on Attraction

[University of Michigan, 2008]

In Chapter 1 of Umberto Eco’s Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, titled “The
Medieval Aesthetic Sensibility,” Eco discusses his views on the Medieval Era’s idea of beauty. According to Eco, the Medievals viewed nature as a reflection of the transcendent world, and while many of the views that they held originate from the Classical Period or from the Bible, the ideas of the Medievals are unique in that they were assimilated from a completely different philosophical perspective. Beauty to the Medievals was encompassed in every day feelings and experiences. They appreciated the beauty of moral harmony and of metaphysical magnificence. The everyday sensuous tastes of the ordinary man, along with the soul, artists, and lovers of art were all viewed as beautiful. There was an important contrast between external and internal beauty. Earthly beauty implied melancholy because of its transience. Beautiful objects such as paintings and sculptures found in the church were deemed inappropriate not for its beauty but for its location. St. Bernard, while acknowledging the beauty of such objects, denoted such sculptures as a distraction from the meditation of God. Interior beauty was felt to be secure in that it does not perish. Human and natural beauty was an important aspect of aesthetics. One way that beauty was defined was the idea of an intellect freely contemplating the wonder and beauty of an object. Rules were formulated for correctly describing a beautiful woman, and the proper size and position of her breasts were also defined. The most defining factor of the Medieval Era’s sense of beauty, however, is the perception that all feelings of artistic beauty found in paintings, sculptures, statues, and other objects of beauty, whether physical or abstract, were immediately converted to a sense of communication with God. The Medieval Era is an era characterized by an amazing integration of values, and people automatically associated beauty and all things good and wondrous as a direct result of the work of God. Thus, doubt exists as to whether the people of this era could truly appreciate beauty for itself. Arguably, they recognized beauty, but since they immediately associated it as an act of God, they failed to recognize it as simply beautiful in itself. Collectors of the era owned many beautiful yet odd pieces of art, and so Eco justifies that the Medievals were unable to discern between artistically beautiful objects and objects of curiosity.
I believe that the music we have studied in class thus far does in fact correlate with Eco’s views about the medieval aesthetic sense of beauty. For example, Eco states that “natural beauty was finally recovered in all its positive value” (Eco 10). In Francesso Landini’s balata Ecco la primavera, he writes about the coming of Spring and the “loveliness” (beauty) of all things associated with the season: falling in love, the air, the weather, the meadows with fresh grass, flowers, and trees. Falling in love is an everyday “lived experience” that Eco also mentions as a characteristic of Medieval beauty. The air, weather, meadows with fresh grass, flowers, and trees all represent things from nature, and so we see that Landini recognizes the beauty of natural things. Ciconia speaks of a beautiful rose, another object of nature, in his balata O rosa bella. He is comparing the rose to his lady and depicting the unfulfilled love for his lady, his beautiful rose.

Eco also reminds us that Matthew of Vendome developed a set of rules for describing beautiful women. In Guillaume de Machaut’s ballade Je puis trop bien ma dame comparer, he compares his lady to the quintessential image of a beautiful woman: Pygmalion’s ivory statue of a perfect maiden. This shows that Machaut’s idea of beauty was set for him by example, and because he loves a lady who closely resembles the statue, we can see that Machaut was striving for a pre-determined idea of beauty. This strive for Pygmalion’s conception of beauty, rather than his own, is analogous with the Medieval view of a predetermined, universal beauty as depicted by Vendome. Pygmalion’s ivory statue was designed so perfectly that Pygmalion dressed her and bought her gifts of jewelry and exquisite clothing as if she were a real person. Machaut compares his lady to Pygmalion’s perfect statue, and laments that like the statue, his lady does not return his love and never answers him. It is a lamenting ballade, telling the story of Machaut’s personal experience with heartache and loss, and he found this theme to be beautiful as it was an everyday occurrence, a feeling, an experience. As Eco states, “…Medievals did not refer first to something abstract and conceptual. It referred also to everyday feelings, to lived experience” (Eco 4).

The Medieval sense of beauty is different from the modern sense of beauty in many ways. In today’s society, we place a high value on physical artwork: paintings, sculptures, drawings, and statues. People flock art museums daily, straining to get a glance at a billion dollar work of art. While the Medievals found physical objects to be beautiful as well, they also found beauty in abstract ideas such as nature, the human soul, everyday feelings such as being in love or experiencing heartbreak, and the ordinary man. We lack this perspective. We have indeed lost the feelings for intelligible beauty. We are so concerned with a million dollar painting of a black circle with a dot in it, or a series of stripes that is titled “art” because of its originality, that we forget to appreciate the beauty of our every day lives. The smell of a rose, the colors of the leaves in the fall, or being in love. The realm of the aesthetic was much larger in the Medieval period than it is nowadays. The people of this period associated beauty with much more ease and with many more physical as well as abstract ideas than we do today. They recognized beauty in nature, every day experiences, the human soul, artists, lovers of art, feelings, moral harmony, metaphysical splendor, the tastes of ordinary man, physical objects and certain women. Today, however, our vision of beauty is quite limited. Beauty is stereotyped in the media. A standard is placed on a “beautiful” woman, and while the Medievals placed a standard on beautiful women as well, today’s stereotypes are taken to a far larger extreme. A beautiful woman by today’s standards is tall, skinny, blonde, and large breasted. The ideal beautiful women always has desirable traits. In fact, any beautiful object in today’s world is always appealing to the eye; the house with bright blue shutters is much more appealing to us than the black house with black shutters. Not only do we fail to see beauty in physical objects that may not be necessarily alluring to look at, but we also fail to see beauty in intangible ideas, such as love, peace, or the human soul.

We would want to recuperate a Medieval sense of beauty for many reasons. We should try to expand our sense of beauty so that it is as large as the Medieval sense was. While unlike the Medievals, we can recognize beauty as beauty- that is, we can incorporate an object as being truly beautiful and not simply a product of God- we would have a much deeper appreciation for the world we live in if we could appreciate the simple and sometimes intangible things in life: feelings, nature, inner beauty, everyday experiences, and humanity itself, as the Medievals did.

Our society is far too fastidious when it comes to epitomizing beauty. Beauty is special, yes, but not rare. We would find beauty all around us if we would only look. A simple melodic line, the sunset, or the pattern of the sand on a beach. Morality, love, and people. Not just people that are appealing to look at, but plain-looking, ordinary people as well. Inner beauty. Good people who have good standards and are trying to make the world a better place. Beauty lies in all of these things, but we are so tunnel visioned in looking for tall, skinny blondes that we miss the simple beauty that surrounds us. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but if that eye is discriminating too harshly on what constitutes beauty, than beauty will become more and more standardized until it diminishes to rarity and possibly nothingness.

The Future of Classical Music: Don’t Give Up Yet

[University of Michigan, 2008]

“Gershwin!” someone shouted, and Joseph Horowitz, former music critic of the New York Times, sadly informed one of his listeners that Gershwin was the incorrect answer. The question he had posed was the name of the composer of the piece that he had just played for us, and the correct answer was Dvorjak. On Friday, November 11, 2005, I attended a seminar given by Joseph Horowitz titled “The Future of Classical Music?” (Note the question mark) and found it to be both interesting and educational. He gave an extensive background on the history of classical music, spoke of important composers of the past, critical musical figures of the present, and the role of classical music in the future.

One point that Horowitz reminded us of is that today, every major orchestra is continuing to develop new marketing strategies in order to sell more tickets to performances. But does this benefit music? he asks. I think that this is an important issue and a problem in today’s cultural life. If symphony boards are solely concerned with selling tickets and thinking about what will sell to the American public, then they are therefore thinking less about the quality of the music they are producing and the purpose of their orchestras. The objective of every musical organization, whether the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, performing for 2,441 people at the Meyerhoff, or the Great Lakes Symphony Orchestra, performing for a hundred people at Flatrock High School, is to study, appreciate, perform, and enjoy music. The selection of music should be based on this objective and this objective alone, not the demands of the public. Because the general public is not musically educated, most people do not have extensive backgrounds or even basic knowledge of music history, and some of the greatest musical works in history may not sound “nice” or “beautiful” to people’s untrained ears. Therefore, performing works outside of the public demand may not be the most financially beneficial. But this should not, under any circumstances, be a determining factor in the music selection that orchestras and symphonies produce.

Another issue that Horowitz discusses is the everlasting debate of the payment of musicians and the quantity of performances that orchestras give each year. It is commonly known that professional musicians are underpaid, and Horowitz deemed this fact as “pathetic” while admitting that there is no easy fix for the problem. I have mixed feelings about this issue. As a musician, I of course understand the importance of having orchestras such as the BSO and the DSO and that the members of these orchestras deserve absolutely the best lives and highest salaries possible for producing the music that they do for a culture which is continuously becoming less and less appreciative of the dying art of classical music. But as a musician I can also say that because this fact is generally acknowledged in the music world, musicians are aware of it when they go into their profession. Therefore, only the most dedicated and passionate musicians will pursue careers within orchestras. If they truly cared about making a better living, they would choose a different career path. Musicians of orchestras do what they do only for their love of music. Consequently, I find the low salary of musicians to somewhat beneficial in that it allows only the most devoted and enthusiastic musicians to be professionals performing on stages in orchestras; those musicians who truly care about what they do and have no desire to make a large amount of money will appear with great orchestras across the nation.

One solution that Horowitz proposed concerning how to present music to the American public made a lot of sense to me. He suggested that every year music students perform in a public festival. This would be beneficial for many reasons. It would force music students to extend their musical experience beyond the practice room, help them to think creatively about performing music, and compel them to ask themselves, “For whom are we playing music, and why?” He also suggested that we encourage the study of the history of music, not the history of composers, and also emphasized the importance of studying the history of symphonies, orchestras, conductors, and of performance. He also stressed the importance of focusing our attention on the question “What is a concert for?”

I agree with these solutions for many reasons. Studying the history of music in comparison to studying the history of composers would help give students a broader sense of where music came from, how it developed, and even where it is going. It will give us the “big picture” of music history. Studying individual composers may help us to better understand certain eras of music or identify certain changes in musical techniques and styles, as well as learn interesting facts about the lives of great composers, but a broader sense of music would be more beneficial overall.

I think that there are not too many concerts in a given season. I understand that the basic demand and supply principle of economics may not provide for a necessarily high salary for musicians given the number of performances they give and the number of people that attend these performances. There may not be a full auditorium for every performance, but the people that do attend almost certainly have a deep appreciation for classical music and are sincere advocates of the arts. Classical music is a dying art form and I think it is imperative that as musicians we keep giving as many concerts as possible, throw caution to the wind about what the public may or may not “want” to hear, ignore the modern standardized sound for beauty, and continue to give as many performances as possible in hopes that the American public will simply come to appreciate the splendor and beauty that classical music is.

Mentre vaga Angioletta: Beyond the Mimesis

[University of Michigan, 2007]

Claudio Monteverdi’s Mentre vaga Angioletta is a lovely madrigal about the admiration of music’s power and its versatility. Monteverdi conveys the poem by Giovanni Battista Guarini very well. Not only does he use text painting with almost every individual word in the poem, but he also conveys an overall sense of admiration and longing throughout the entire work.

Guarini’s poem is about all of the things that music is capable of doing, describing in detail the abilities of the human voice to convey contradictory characteristics: it can be hurried and held back, broken and swift, projected and low, and tremulous and firm. It begins with the wonderment of Angioletta, one of the three virtuoso women singers of the concerto delle donne, and ends with the statement that the human heart steers clear from love in order to prevent it from being broken.

Taking a closer look at the text painting, we can see that Monteverdi pays such close attention to the words that almost every word in the poem is adequately imitated through the music. For example, with the words “my heart beats faster” the notes of the madrigal pick up in tempo and continue in an ascending fashion of thirds, followed by an upward scale. With the words “I try to fathom how” Monteverdi provides his listeners with minor music, depicting mystery and echoing the poet’s wonderment. “The Spirit of Music” brings the entrance of instruments, showing the pomp and importance of this spirit and presenting us with the theme of the poem. With “into a fount of exquisite harmony” we are treated to a display of harmonies and intensity unprecedented in the madrigal; the music creates the imagery of a fountain and one might imagine a fountain bursting with new and exciting harmonies. The phrase “urging it on” is accompanied with an ascending pattern, musically portraying encouragement and urgency. It seems that every word describing the characteristics of music is confirmed in the music: with “broken syllables” the phrase is broken up, with “sometimes softly murmuring” the voice becomes quieter and melancholy, with “low and liquid” the voice is indeed lower and smooth, “alternating” of course brings in additional voices and alternating harmonies, “held notes” are held, with “now suspended” the melody is sung with two voices, a cappella, in sync, as if suspended in the air without instrumental accompaniment, and with “spreads its wings and flies” the melody takes off in an ascending style, depicting a heart flying up, up, and away into safety.

I do sense that Monteverdi is trying to go above and beyond the text painting mimesis idea of the Renaissance. Not only is he using text painting with each individual word, but he is using it with the entire work as a whole. He leaves us with an unresolved harmony, and the idea that the heart should fly away from love, taking a pessimistic perspective on being in love. According to Guarini’s text, music is a spirit that can do so many things, and eventually will even transform the human heart into a bird so that it may fly away from love and heartbreak. Monteverdi supports this belief by articulating each and every capability of the Spirit of Music.