What have I been up to during the pandemic?

Welcome to my blog! As I have started blogging in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, I thought in my first post I'd share how I've been spending my extra time. Naturally, this involves heavy recreational reading. This post is the first in a series that shares my rumings on some of the books I've finished this summer, others that I've only just begun, and still others that are on the list to start before I go back to school in the autumn. I start with an uncommon genre: music books for the general reader.

Picking up where I left off nearly a decade ago

Every bad situation comes with a silver lining. During quarantine I've not only been reading, but I've picked up an old hobby from my grade school days: playing the piano. I was lucky enough to practice my very rusty notes on a beautiful instrument without any complaints from the piano's owners (thank you, Cummings Family!). I realised that the last time I seriously practised was when I was sixteen years old. Although then I played better much more fluidly than now, after having listened to a wider range of music my understanding of music theory, rhythm, and expression is now far beyond where it was when I was performing and competing. Yet, I felt that I couldn't apply this knowledge to a better interpretation of the pieces I had revived from my repertoire.

In order to correct this I did something perhaps inadvisable for someone in my situation: I began to learn Chopin's Ballade No. 4, a piece that is foolishly ambitious for someone who is out of practice and has no intention of becoming a concert pianist. But the challenge excited me. How could someone who is not a professional musician approach such a complex piece?

As a sort of preparatory work I browsed the music section of my local used book store and came across What to listen for in music (1961) by Aaron Copland. This was promising: a book written by a notable American composer for non-musicians interested in not just hearing music but listening to it. Copland's work exceeded my high expectations. He organises the book roughly into an introductory section on how we listen to music and how composers compose; a description of the four key elements of music (rhythm, melody, harmony, and tone colour); a list of the fundamental forms (sectional, variation, fugal, sonata, and free forms); a brief discussion of other forms (opera, contemporary, and film music); and a conclusion relating the roles of the composer, interpreter, and listener.

I would like to start where Copland ends. What is the relationship between a listener and composer? Copland finds the relationship two ways:

“Music can only be really alive when there are listeners who are really alive.” (163)

While it is the role of composers to express themselves through their work, it is our responsibility as listeners to listen as intelligently and consciously as possible. Part of this comes from experience: the more you listen to sonatas, for example, the more you can contextualise and understand an individual sonata among many. But part of this comes from a diligent approach to music listening (of all sorts, not just classical). Beyond a desire to feel music, but we might try and understand it.

But how can we comprehend music in all its complexity and varied manifestations? My first step was to try to track the development and corresponding purpose of different musical forms (and to see if the latter concept even existed). Copland gives an excellent overview of the major musical forms, but here I will focus on the sonata. The word sonata literally means something to be played (i.e., by an instrument) and can be compared to its counterpart—the cantata—which is to be sung. In its simplest sense, the sonata is a work to be played by a solo instrument. Perhaps the following might clarify how the sonata fits compares to other forms of music:

• Sonata: played by solo instrument

• Symphony: orchestra

• String quartet: four strings (usually two violins, a viola, and a cello)

• Concerto: solo instrument plus orchestra

Each of the above musical forms will arouse different emotions, ideas, and reflections based on the instrumentation. Not being a composer, I cannot say what makes one form more suitable than another to convey these emotions, ideas, and reflections. This is where the notion of a musical idea comes in, and where I find Copland's book truly enlightens. When a musical idea, or theme, comes to the composer's mind, this is where Copland deems the act of composition begins.

"The theme is a gift from Heaven. He doesn't know where it comes from—has no control over it." (25)

This theme is the heart and soul of a piece. It is not the only defining factor of it; one must of course also listen to the different rhythms, harmonies, dynamics, etc. Listening to the theme means more than just following the melody, wherever it may be; it means listening to how the theme changes, expands, contracts, disappears, and returns, all in one piece. This idea, more than any other, has helped me grasp the essence of the Fourth Ballade, and indeed other works of music, long and short.

A 19th century promenade

After reading Copland's book, I thought I ought to try to first understand Chopin's Ballade No. 4 in terms of its form, then get to the theme. As I began listening and numbering the sections, I thought to myself, "What is a ballade?" What does a ballade look like stylistically (compared to, say, an étude or a sonata) and how did it emerge as a musical form? After some googling around, I picked up (downloaded, to be precise) a copy of Jim Samson's study, Chopin, the four ballades (1992), to answer some of these questions. In this academic book Samson first contextualises Chopin's development as a composer when he composed his four ballades and then analyses each one and all four together.

In summary, the Chopin ballade is a form fashioned by the composer roughly in the style of a sonata. You may have heard the First Ballade in the 2002 Roman Polanski film The Pianist, the scene where he sits down to play for the Nazi in the abandoned house at the end of the war. I personally discovered the ballades through this film as I was delighted by the piece and was inspired to learn more about these works.

The Fourth Ballade starts off slowly, introducing the major theme in the right hand:

The piece then goes on to develop this theme, elaborating it in different ways. Chopin's true genius lies, I believe, in his flawless layering of thematic material into a work. He is often referred to as the most "pianistic" piano composer; his pieces are made not just for the piano, but are also shaped by the piano's functionality as an instrument that is played vertically, with the pianist's two hands more like two or more instruments in a symphony or voices in a choir than a single melody.

Below is my favourite interpretation of the piece by Raul Koczalski, recorded in 1938. Compare the simplicity of the melody at 0:22 to 0:32 and how it evolves, intensifying at 1:49 to 1:58 and then gaining a richness in texture at 2:05 to 2:11 and at 2:16 to 2:23.

The theme progressively advances as the piece goes on, but there is an integrity (re: wholeness) to the feel of the piece that connects each musical phrase to its section and the whole. My inchoate understanding of the piece, therefore, is quite literary, in that it reads as an essay, a literary one such as the ones written by Virginia Woolf, but an essay nonetheless. Samson would agree:

“The title 'ballade' signifies no particular programme, then, but it does invite the listener to interpret musical relationships at least partly in the terms of a literary narrative, even if this can only be at the level of a metaphor.” (19).

The relationship of Chopin's music, especially his longer works, with literature has something that has always spoken to me, but I could never articulate until I began studying his life and approach to composition. At the same time, his music is evocative in the deepest sense of the word, stirring one's spirit and remaining etched in one's memory. Louis Ehlert said it best:

"Chopin narrates a story, but one which has never taken place, except as an odyssey of the spirit." (35).

And, I might add, an odyssey of the mind.

Until next time

My next musical book will be Beethoven the Creator (1903) by Romain Rolland, a study of the "peak" years of 1803 to 1806 when Beethoven composed the Eroica symphony, the Appassionata symphony, and Fidelio (his only opera). Sadly this book is difficult to find as it is more than a century old and originally in French (as Vie de Beethoven), but I ordered a translation published in 1961 through my local used book store.

Stay tuned for my next blog post discussing some of the novels I've been buried in this summer.