Reger Kills Fugues and Patriotism with One Stone (leaf)

My introduction to Max Reger (1873-1916) came from an amusing book called The Best, the Worst and the Most Unusual, an overview of notable achievements in (mostly Western) literature, sports, music and the arts as decided by a wide survey of critics in the mid-70's.  Reger's name popped up as the "worst" composer, and the entry rattled off a number of eccentric and unattractive details of Reger's personality and biography (including his odd dietary habits, obviously the most germane factor in assessing one's oeuvre) while inaccurately calling him out as attempting to blend modern classical techniques with 16th century marching band music, while not a single piece of his displays that particular genre as an influence.  Reger was enormously prolific during his brief composing career, writing over 150 works of often striking complexity and craftsmanship in a wide variety of instrumentations, always sticking to the grand "absolute music" tradition of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.  His style pushes tonal writing to its breaking point in terms of daisy-chained diminished chords, gnarly counterpoint and Wagnerian denial of the tonic, and part of his quixotic reputation comes from how he would sometimes take such leaps in tonal logic that the development from one key to the next would be so abrupt as to give the listener whiplash.  I'll admit that I don't like every work of his I've heard but I'll never fault someone for trying as hard as they can within their own artistic language.He was especially skilled at writing fugues and managed to churn out dozens of them despite their being very difficult to write - I know, as I took fugue class at two different schools and mostly wrote crap.  One of his most celebrated works, the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by J. S. Bach, op. 81, ends with a 7-1/2-minute fugue that is among the greatest I've ever heard (though nothing will top this one by this guy).  On a more modest scale, we've got this little guy:

This fughetta lacks an opus number but was written in 1916, the year of his untimely death of a heart attack at age 43.  The "deutschlandlied" is Deutschland uber Alles, the German national anthem, and Reger was correct in thinking that it would make a nice subject for a fugue with its clear stepwise motion and neat harmonic progression.  While this is far from the thickest of the Reger fugues little chromatic squibbles are still present and the piece serves as a good introduction to his habit of logically elliptical harmonic motion.  The end has that dark, accented quality that the end of Bach's fugues often take on and prompted Arnold Bax to say that the finales of Bach pieces sound like "the running of a sewing machine".  Either way you slice it the Fughette is a congenial leaf that would make a fine encore to an all-Germanic piano recital, and it's nice that, when the pianist Markus Becker mounted a multi-CD overview of Reger's complete piano output, he didn't forget this piece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQG_E2de-M

Embedding disabled by request, sorry :(

~PNK

Penderecki on the art of dancing on violin strings

Krzysztof Penderecki has had a very long, storied career, pioneering Avant-Garde music in Poland right after Stalin and his artistic policies died and further distinguishing himself from there.  Unlike a lot of composers, however, Penderecki's music only got more accessible as it went on.  His most well-known work is the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima* for string orchestra, using space/time notation instead of meter and a variety of lines instead of notes to striking effect:

As the years rolled by and the Scene changed Penderecki's urge to experiment waned in the face of a career in no need of being proven to colleagues.  You might remember this part of his much later Symphony no. 3 from a little movie called Shutter Island, part of a fine line of horror movies since The Exorcist to rely on Avant-Garde composers for soundtrack bits:

Penderecki has long been associated with my old favorite composer Witold Lutoslawski, not just because they spearheaded the Warsaw Autumn festival as well as making Poland a major international voice in contemporary Classical music, but also because they both had an interest in using cutting-edge techniques to create music out of pure gesture and drama, and this "Passacaglia" movement from the third Symphony is just as in line with that sentiment as the Threnody, though admittedly a bit more...soundtracky. That was in the late 80's, and today we're going to look at a piece he wrote 2009, marking the 4th time we've covered a piece from the 21st century that I didn't write myself.

(Click for larger view)

Much like that the faster of the Tui St. George Tucker pieces we looked at back in March, the Tanz owes a lot to the overarching influence Bartók had on post-WWII music, especially Eastern Bloc countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia and the like.  The Tanz is so conventional compared to stuff like the Threnody and other pieces that will most likely end up on this blog it might as well be Paganini - in fact, it's more like Paganini than Bartók, ain't it?  This Tanz fits in nicely with that Romantic "gypsy" genre that was popular in salons throughout the 19th century and many years of the 20th, using lots of tricky double stops and savage downbows.  These tricks are also deeply ingrained in Eastern European folk music, though usually a bit more Southern than Poland.  I don't know who Janine is, though - any clues?  Penderecki's Wikipedia page gave me no clues.  My guess is a college student, as while this is difficult it's no far cry from a lot of the etudes violinists are given on the collegiate level.  In that same spirit, here's a collegiate-level violinist nearly pulling the piece off.**

~PNK

*The funny thing about the Threnody is that it was originally just called 8'37'', presumably as a nod to Cage.  He only added the Hiroshima reference after hearing the first performance and noticing the emotional resonance of the work, and decided to dedicate it to atomic bomb victims.

**Sorry, I couldn't find a better recording on YouTube.

A Monday Modinha by a Mozart (not that one)

It's always bugged me that Villa-Lobos has remained the sole face of Brazilian classical music for decades, not because I'm an expert in the field but more because I was always a bigger fan of Camargo Guarnieri.  Usually dropping his first name of Mozart (seriously) in his published works, Guarnieri worked closely with Brazilian folk models for much of his music but took a great many technical and expressive risks and added to many a hard-worn genre (symphony, string quartet) with immense creativity and flair.  The piano was his canvas for a great many excellent works and he had a knack for miniatures by themselves and in sets, and his Suite Mirim is a fine and accessible introduction to his work by way of little ivory ticklers.  Cast in four movements, the Suite is based on traditional Brazilian dances, keeping it in line with the traditional point of a suite but not about to fall for the old "allemande" trick.  All four dances ("Ponteado", "Tanguinho", "Modinha" and "Ciradinha") are short but only one has that leafy thinness we so desire at FL, the third.

A modinha is a sentimental love song and likewise the "Modinha" is the most delicate and modest of the four dances, and even just glancing at the first line one can see how well those classes in close-voiced imitative counterpoint payed off.  The reduced volume and thorough craftsmanship allude to sentiments long dead, like faded floral stenciling or an antique photograph of a young bride in a tin box.  It's a little marvel of economy and class and adds a rich heart to a very fleeting set whose harmonies veer into the privately quixotic.  You can hear (and see) the Suite below, and as we enter our second week of nice days here in Western Washington it's nice to remember that we were just recently stuck indoors with mugs of tea - though the more Guarnieri I hear the more I want to swap the tea for a caipirinha.

~PNK

A pair of viola ganders at Tui St. George Tucker

Tui St. George Tucker has been in my sights for quite a while, and while I'm not sure I can whip up a full article for her just yet (mostly due to a lack of decent recordings of her stuff), her sheer sui generis-ness can't be ignored any longer.  Named for a New Zealander (-ish?  -esque?) bird and primarily based at a North Carolina boy's camp, Tucker was a musical figure unlike any other, combining the technical variety of Ives with the amateur-applauding enthusiasm of the John Cage/Larry Polansky/David Mahler outsider tradition, Tucker went from 40's NY Avant-Garde fixture to near total obscurity, crafting a strange and charming body of work, all unpublished until after her death in 2004, when a website appeared and posted her oeuvre.  Her musical voice ranged from opaque atonality to nostalgic jazz throwbacks; drew inspiration from subjects as diverse as Zen Buddhist call-and-response games, Lutheran hymns, and peyote; developed a personal approach to microtonality; and expanded the technical and expressive possibilities of the recorder, arguably writing more music for it than any other 20th-century composer I can think of (aside from Fulvio Caldini, that is).  She also wrote a great deal of music for the viola, which brings us to a pair of leaves for the instrument that an enterprising violist performed as part of an American Female Composer retrospective and uploaded to YouTube.  Let's viola, shall we?

Compared to some of her wackier pieces (like that bit in the Peyote Sonata for piano that has a 17:16 rhythmic juxtaposition) the Partita and Cassation for solo viola are pretty normal looking.  The Partita is among a long line of muscular atonal curtain-openers for solo instruments inspired by Bartók - even though I can't prove it's inspired by Bartók it doesn't take too much squinting to divine that conclusion.  There's a lot of double-stops running around and scales switch on a dime, not to mention the brusque rhythms and restlessness.  At 2 minutes it'd seem a natural fit for college recitals, so it's good someone took the risk at least once.

On a graver note, Tucker uses a strange, non-abstract Jackson Pollack painting as the inspiration for a Cassation, starting on a slow plod down the stairs and switching things up right quick.  As in the Partita the harmonic language is highly reminiscent of darker Eastern European works from the 40's and 50's, albeit with a volatile execution, and would make a fine intro for George Crumb's Sonata for Solo Cello if anybody reading this is planning on doing a collegiate duo recital (*COUGH*COUGH*).  If nothing else it could be paired with Stravinsky's Elegy for solo viola, his only solo work for the instrument and just one of dozens of sorely underplayed viola works that I'd like to see performed live.  Seriously, if I had the money I'd sponsor seasons full of chamber recitals just for these blogs, and I bet someone out there has money, don't you?

So here's the deal - this stuff is nothing.  I don't mean nothing in that they're bad pieces, but rather that her music has so much more variety than these, just not in leaf form.  There's stuff like the Peyote Sonata for piano that features a 15:16 rhythmic juxtaposition:

Her many microtonal works for recorder, clarinet and other instruments, like the Amoroso:

And whatever this is:

There's a heck of a lot more where these came from, and you can see it all at the scores page of her website.  I'll warn you ahead of time that almost none of her scores were typeset, so most look like they were accidentally used to clean cannon barrels.  But isn't that exciting?  You're part of the excavation, diving into the wilds of unpublished music!  And the people running her website were pretty thorough, putting up a bunch of unfinished works and fragments alongside the finished ones, so anybody can play amateur musicologist if they wish.  Boys' camps in North Carolina never had it so good, let me tell you.  Also, if you're interested in any of this see if you can find a copy of the Centaur Records retrospective CD of her work, comprised of amateur recordings most likely made at Camp Catawba during her life and showcasing the full breadth of her peculiar oeuvre.

12 French Images in (Female) Leaves

In the age of the Inter-Butz it's easy to forget that not every scrap of information one could glean from the 'net is actually gleanable.  In spite of how obscure most of the figures and works I cover here are I've usually been able to get enough info for a good paragraph and some change - not so with today's subject, Annette Dieudonné.  Dieudonné became a student of Nadia Boulanger in the 1910's and after fourteen years took up the duty as herPA for most of her life.  Her bio stops about there pretty much every place you look.  As I'm no Boulanger expert I probably wouldn't have ever heard of her if not for my own efforts to look over every single French piano piece written in the 1910's and 20's.  Those surely well-used efforts unearthed a 1922 set of piano pieces, the Douze Images en Courtes Preludés, and once again I'm pleased to be defending well-crafted modesty.

Each image is conveniently (for FL) only a page long, and few of them are much more difficult than this one.  They're most certainly pedagogical pieces and appear to be the only piano pieces Dieudonné was able to get published; all her other published works are sacred choral music.  Her style is amiably clear and straightforward, totally entrenched in a kind of bittersweet elegance particular to French composers of the 1910's.  Even pieces one would expect to be extroverted, like "The Weasel"-

-still focus on rich voicing and serious harmonies, as if the weasel was dancing a courante at Fauré's birthday party.  I get the feeling that Dieudonné had little interest in extroversion, and diffuse color tricks like the right hand's lydian/myxolydian rippling in "The Garden's Tranquil Water-Path" resonated more in her soul.

That isn't to say that "The Weasel" was her only attempt at humor, as "The Parakeets' Cage" squawks appropriately (though not without effective modal voicing, of course):

"Cypress Alley" is the most lugubrious of the bunch, its marching mountains of a left hand straight out of Debussy (such as the Berceuse Heroique") but might be closer to Holst in execution, and it takes a good 30 seconds for a flat to appear.  The succeeding "Lullaby" features much lighter voicing, showcasing how the light pinging of upper-register secondal intervals with the pedal down are great representations for sleepy recognition of the world's troubles, and is no poor shakes in the vast and wonderful piano lullaby rep.

Methinks that Dieudonné had a liking for birds and perfect fifths, and "The Aviary" goes whole hog on both fronts.  This isn't as tricky as it looks, but keeping the hands from running into each other is a special practice session all its own.  Actually, the most difficult part is the rhythmic precision required to land the bass-clef fifths in measure 6 and similar measures.  The quintal harmonies turn to quartal, and far more plodding, in the following piece, "The Poor in Church".  There's a sense of depressed plainchant, as Dieudonné presumably thought the Poor would bring the sorrows of the world to Church.  I'm not sure what the grace notes in the left hand are - perhaps the Church's organist playing the notes sloppily?  Though that's the problem with trying to interpret tone-painting - there's no end to it and you'll most likely overshoot the author's intentions.

Well, enough of that - here's a clown!

(If I'm being terribly honest, this one's my least favorite simply because it doesn't go far enough.  You need a lot of pyrotechnics and zip to make clown pieces work (like Debussy's "Général Lavine - eccentric") and this one just isn't wacky enough.  You also need an excellent pianist with a lot of 'tude to really clown the place up and not every serious pianist has the nerve to put a lot of work into clown music.)

"The Old Carriage" is another sad piece, eschewing the humor of a broken-down carriage (or car, I'm not sure which one she's referring to) in favor of lost strength.  The alternating seconds (from D/E to D/E-flat) intimates creaking unease, but once again perfect fourths and fifths lead the way.

"Bells on a Festival Morning" is pretty self-explanatory, requiring as much pedal as one can get without getting overwhelmingly jangly...or should it?

The set ends with "Clear Paths", possibly the most philosophical piece in the bunch.  A study in parallel motion, the piece exudes a calm and confidence that makes for a holistically reassuring ending.  The whole set is reassuring, a warm and sane contribution to the less-difficult piano rep and a nice resource for piano teachers looking for something left-of-center.  I'd be interested to see Dieudonné's sacred works as I'm sure they're welcome siblings to the sacred works of the Boulangers, which means we'd most certainly be in good hands.  Annette Dieudonné might be the most obscure figure I'll discuss this WHM but her sole piano work is worth more than a footnote in history.  I was considering making my own recording of these works, as there is no commercial recording, but thankfully Emile Naoumoff, Nadia Boulanger's last student, made a fine interpretation for his YouTube channel.  In case non-jazz improvisation interests you Naoumoff has been making daily improvisations for some time now.  Either way it's good that someone's looking out for the little gal, and people like him are exactly what Women's History Month needs.

~PNK

A Crumb Crumb for Sunday

For as much as George Crumb has become a symbol of the audience-pleasing end of the post-60's Avant-Garde in musical America it's easy to forget that he started out writing more conventional music in the 50's, dark Bartokian fantasies such as the Sonata for Solo Cello.  It wasn't until the early 60's rolled around when Crumb's music started to turn towards the outlandish-yet-accessible, extended-technique-rife marvels we perform frequently, and while most (including me) point to his Lorca settings as the great works of this period we can't overlook the Five Pieces for Piano (1962).  Those familiar with the piano parts in works like Vox Balanae (which I had the privilege of performing in Boston) know to expect lots of harmonics, pizzicatos, and simple preparation such as placing sheets of paper or glass rods on the strings or holding a paperclip to a vibrating low string to create a steady metallic buzz.  The Five Pieces is where all those techniques started to crop up, and a leaf in the middle might be the most subtle and elegant of them all.

(Click to enlarge)

As indicated in Crumb's gorgeously hand-engraved score, every sound in this "Notturno" is produced from inside the piano, plucking the strings either by fingertips or fingernails and adding various effects when most effective.  Right away we see the paperclip trick, a very simple yet unique effect that I've never seen done by another composer for reasons I don't understand.  Plucking strings on the inside of the piano is tricky because strings are very close together and unmarked, often requiring the pianist to label each string to be plucked with bits of labeled tape, and man alive, are there a lot of plucked notes in this piece, and the rhythms and dynamics indicated are very subtle indeed.  The most elaborate rhythm-'n'-technique package challenge comes in the third bar of the second stave, wherein a dense cluster of plucked notes has to be stopped without sounding in a specific order and in time, and while it might not be obvious there's a lot of risk of accidentally resounding strings simply by taking your finger off them and drawing the skin across the metal.  All of this is written in a luminously acidic language that has all of the economy of Crumb without his allusions to tonality or poetic word-painting.  As most of the US is encased in ice the static drama of this piece seems as apt as anything, and this newer recording I've included below might be the best I've heard yet of the piece.  You'll have to produce your own night conditions, though; there's no embed option for the sun going away.

~PNK

A Valentine's Rose for (by) Mr. Tenney

James Tenney isn't a name commonly associated with things people remember, but he was among the most singular figures in the American avant-garde music scene of the 60's, and was at the forefront of movements as diverse as minimalism and scoring Stan Brakhage shorts.  I've played a handful of his pieces and if there's anything I find attractive about his work it's that he had a predilection for tiny pieces, specifically pieces small enough to be mailed as a postcard, like this one:

Among them is the most memorable pseudo-Avant-Garde valentine I've seen yet, aside from the work of the great Baude Cordier:

Now, I can't be certain that the piece functions as a round, but it looks like every measure could sound OK on top of each other, meaning that the next voice might be able to enter at the start of any measure, though I have yet to wrangle a group of children together to test this.  I do know that the inner circle is identical to the outer one and the lyrics, taken from Gertrude Stein's poem "Sacred Emily", are exquisitely banal, even more than Stein's world-champion one-dimensionaler "I Am Rose".  The setting includes a neat off-set loop form where the words shift over one note each phrase repetition, a kind of rudimentary phasing.  While I'd like to think that the piece is a valentine to fellow composer Philip Corner, upon hearing a recording of one possible realization it feels more like an experiment to make people's heads explode.

There's also kindergartner's doing it, most likely a result of the anti-vaccination movement.

A rose is a rose is a rose is a valentine*.

~PNK

*Is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a valentine is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is